Some minor details: 1) Lines of resolution in analog video is not the same thing as scan lines. For example NTSC always has 525 scan lines or 262.5 X 2 if you take in the interlacing into account. What lines of resolution really means is the number of lines or dots that can be resolved within a scan line, and above 40% of the video range (0.7 volts). It's analogous to pixels. The term comes from film photography where they measure camera resolution the same way. So a "resolution of 240 lines" means that there is enough high frequency bandwidth to resolve 240 dots within a scan line. But there sill is 525 (or 262.5 x 2) actual scan lines. True broadcast standard definition video is 640 pixels or over "600 lines", So based on that, VHS was rather poor. The accepted formula is 80 lines per megahertz of video bandwidth in the analog world. 2) All analog consumer VCRs and 3/4in Umatic recorded the color separately. This was mandatory due to the lower video bandwidth on lower cost formats. In VHS, the 3.58 mhz chroma side bands are down converted to 767khz. and mixed back to the FM luminance signal that is recorded on. the tape. It is a AM signal using the luminance FM as a bias signal. Since it is an AM recording, noise is a problem. And the reduction of the chroma frequency also reduces the bandwidth of the encoded R-Y, B-Y video signals. The chroma system in SVHS is functionally identical to any old VHS VCR. What they did on SVHS was to raise the FM carrier frequency so that more luminance video bandwidth could be recorded. But that also demanded new tape formulations to make it work correctly. As we only sense detail in the luminance or B&W portion of the signal, it does look sharper. But SVHS did nothing to improve the chroma bandwidth or the noise that resulted form the AM recording process which gave VHS the "cartoon" look for color. The Svideo jack is another discussion which has nothing to do with SVHS. In fact Svideo connectors could have been added to any standard VHS machine. What Svideo does is to keep the chroma and luminance separated, in theory from the mastering process all the way to the consumer display. The bulk of the NTSC artifacts such as dot crawl and the rainbow on Jonny Carson's Houndstooth sport jacket occur when the luminance and chroma signals are combined for composite video. So if you can avoid combining them and then breaking them apart multiple times, you have less NTSC artifacts. Then why didn't plain VHS VCRs, which also record the chroma separately, ever have Svideo connectors? I believe because the quality on standard VHS was so poor, any benefit from Svideo connections would have been negligible. Additionally why add a feature to standard VHS that could potentially undermine the market for SVHS VCRs. Also keep in mind that Svideo is NOT component video where RGB or Y, RY,BY are three separate video signals. Only some broadcast formats such as Sony Betacam (not Betamax) or Panasonic M2 recorded true component video. Of course digital VTRs changed all of that. Svideo is kind of in between composite and component video and in reality did little to improve the image over composite as broadcast and most movie mastering was still composite until the mid 1990s when we went digital. You can play an SVHS tape on a standard VHS VCR. But you will observe dropouts and noise on bright white portions of the image. This is because standard VHS cannot handle the higher FM frequencies used in SVHS. The brighter the video signal, the higher the FM frequency. A dark dim TV show or movie on SVHS may play fine on a standard VHS VCR, But watch what happens with white credits on a dark background.
Excellent explanation! Just want to add that some VHS machines had SQPB (S-VHS quasi playback) that could play, as the name implies, SVHS tapes without these problems. But the output is still VHS quality.
Most later standard VHS VCRs do support Super VHS playback. It will only be at standard VHS quality, but otherwise the image will look fine. This was called "Quasi S-VHS" or "SQPB" (S-VHS Quasi PlayBack). And if you did have a Super VHS VCR, S-VHS ET allowed you to make nearly-full-quality S-VHS recordings on inexpensive regular VHS tapes, although it was more prone to noise and dropouts.
@@okaro6595 As I explained above, lines of resolution does not mean counting scan lines. In NTSC those are fixed at 525 lines and 625 in PAL. The resolution measurement is the number of resolvable line pairs per line. Resolvable means at least 40ire on a standard 1 volt video signal. Another way to measure that is with multiburst or a sweep signal. The formula is 80 lines per mhz of bandwidth.
I'm sorry but you misunderstood what "240 lines of resolution" means. As you mention, each video frame is 525 lines (625 lines in PAL). This is true for the air waves as well as for the picture that gets recorded on a VCR (there were some obscure early video recording systems that only recorded one field but I'll ignore those). The 240 lines that you're talking about are not vertical (video) lines but the number of vertical lines that could be recorded in a single video line, i.e. the number of times that the video signal could go from black to white on a single line of video without losing too much quality. On a high quality broadcast NTSC signal, the resolution is about 640 lines (on PAL it's about 720) if I remember correctly. Both VHS and S-VHS record luminance and chrominance signals separately, but on S-VHS there is more separation than on VHS. They are basically frequency-modulated, and the modulated signal is recorded by the spinning heads, at the same time. In both VHS and S-VHS, the luminance signal is modulated at the same base frequency so if you play an S-VHS tape on a VHS machine, you'll see a black and white picture. But the luminance and chrominance signals are modulated further apart on S-VHS than on VHS. That way there is more room in the modulated signal to record more resolution. It also requires better tape (with smaller magnetic particles). You can drill a hole in the right place in a high quality VHS cassette and make S-VHS mode recordings with an S-VHS recorder. You'll get a higher quality recording than VHS but not as good as S-VHS on S-VHS tape. Of course, quality is highly dependent on the quality of the tape because it's still an analog format. I still have my PAL S-VHS recorder from Europe, and it has a Teletext decoder attached to it for VPS/VPT (Video Programming System / Video Programming via Teletext). It made it possible to program the VCR by going to the Teletext page that showed program information for the station you were tuned into and programming the VCR to record a scheduled show with a single button. And it would automatically record the show even if it was rescheduled or started early or late. It also allows watching Teletext from recorded tapes, but that really only works with tapes that are recorded in S-VHS mode, because the teletext signal needed a resolution of 320 (or was it 360?) lines: Each Teletext line of text was transmitted as a video line with 40 bytes of digital information: seven or eight bits per character plus a parity bit. There was also a VHS-Pro format that had an even higher quality / resolution than S-VHS. My college had a Panasonic VHS-Pro editing studio ca. 1992 but it wasn't used much and I've never seen the format anywhere else.
I think you might be slightly mistaken as well. It is true that a VHS machine does output 525 lines, which is the NTSC standard, but VHS tape itself can only resolve approximately 43% of that detail. This is where the standard ~240 lines of horizontal resolution is obtained in most literature on VHS.
@@VintageElectronicsChannelAn analogue format can't actively drop scan lines, it would take complicated digital circuitry to achieve that which those machines didn't have. Therefore VHS has full 525(NTSC)/625(PAL SECAM) scan lines, it can't help doing so. "Lines of resolution" does not refer to these scan lines. It means left-right resolution. The wording is ambiguous which leads to misunderstanding, measuring horizontal resolution in MHz would be less confusing. Broadcast quality is about 5 MHz, VHS can only deliver 2.4 MHz, ish. Actual picture content is only 480 scan lines(!) in NTSC, 575 in PAL/SECAM not due to overscan, but because the vertical blanking signal uses up 45 (NTSC)/50(PAL SECAM) lines. There's no image information there, which is why in digital applications like DVD and standard definition digital broadcast, only 480/576 lines are transmitted. DVD players and digital settop boxes with analogue out recreate a standard NTSC/PAL signal by adding 45/50 black lines to each frame.
The color RECORDING is identical for VHS and S-VHS ! 627KHz AM Colorunder. However, the separate Y/C cables enable a higher Y resolution than is possible via a Y/C separation filter based on a CVBS source (broadcast tuner, laser disc, VHS recorder). Many other “experts” on YT have already explained this incorrectly. TV engineer from Hamburg.
this is a common misunderstanding, yes. fun fact : it might be good to remember (not to you, of course :D) than early philips VCR (N150x) had a separated Y/C din socket on their back :)
@@whaka54000 The VCR Recorders from PHILIPS only have a CVBS Output from the Factory. DIN or BNC. However, I suggested a Circuit Diagram to pick up Y and C separately from PHILIPS VCR Recorders. th-cam.com/video/4BMRAhz2ruk/w-d-xo.html
It's not right to say SVHS recorded luma and chroma separately. BetacamSP does that. SVHS is a colour under format, the chroma performance is ghastly just like VHS, making it utterly useless for broadcast use. SVHSC pretty much bombed, it couldn't compete with Hi8 which was smaller, has much longer running time and was supported by more manufacturers. SVHS would have done better if the chroma performance had been improved, not just luma.
Wich is sad but makes sense because Panasonic has always making very high quality and good Super VHS and Super VHS-C camcorders even until the early 2000s. I bought a Super VHS-C camcorder probably from very early 2000s or maybe 1999 (Is a NV-VS4) that had TBC, Super image stabilization, the "ET" function and some other cool things except it have mono audio but even stereo microphones built in consumer camcorders where barely the same as mono microphones. The real difference in audio was with more professional shotgun microphones. Don't get me wrong still the VHS-C format was not good but Panasonic did very very good camcorders in the Super VHS and Super VHS-C line! Especially those that had the amorphous pro heads in a lot of Panasonic cameras.
I grew up with PAL VHS and DVD. One thing I noticed when playing NTSC tapes, was that the blacks are lighter compared to PAL tapes where black is black. The NTSC VHS tapes had very muted colours and also have this effect where the redish colours leave motion smearing. The PAL tapes don't handle reds that well either with colour bleed everywhere, but they don' t have the motion smearing
I was sort of late to the game as I got my first second hand VHS recorder in 1991. But I was also late to give it up as I used VHS up until 2021 - though not very often and it was a newer machine than the one I bought in 1991. To me SVHS was something I pretty much never noticed. In my circle of people the discussion was more if VHS-LP had a tolerable quality. There was one guy I knew who recorded everything in LP to save tape and it was a bummer when you wanted to borrow a movie from him and your own machine only had SP like mine.
I put up with the inferior quality of VHS - PAL over here - until something better than SVHS came along. I embraced DVCAM. I saw little point shelling out for a new SVHS system only to have to replace it shortly afterwards. It was also a breeze to import DV footage into premiere for clean editing which did not degrade on copying back. But I certainly don't miss those pumping reds from VHS.
Two fields don't necessarily make up a frame of video when we're talking about stuff that's shot on video. Every field is a moment in time of its own, so 60hz video means 60 fields and each field is that moment in time, if you combine them you get combing artifacts. The reason people talk about it as a frame is that's how digital interlaced video works, analog video you don't have frames, you just have odd and even fields.
Still running my Mitsubishi HS-M1000 S-VHS VCR. BTW, many VHS machines which came out after S-VHS had “Qasi S-VHS” playback which allowed playback of S-VHS tapes albeit in standard VHS quality.
I tried the first couple of JVC S-VHS machines released at the time and found them to be unimpressive with very poor frame manipulation, I sent them back. I left it a couple of years and then purchased Panasonic (starting with FS100) and never looked back. As with most machines, the tape you put in the machine had a major effect on the picture quality and the best tape I found that worked with the Panasonic's were TDK XP-PRO. There always seemed to be more dot -crawl and less colour with JVC tapes.
Am still using a VHS player in my audio video setup because there's a catalog of films we have on that format that we don't have on any digital format, and the grandkids are perfectly content. And they enjoying putting the cartridges in, rewinding them, and taking them out - the cartridges are large and easy for them to handle. It's like it's kind of a goid format for choldren's content. Can go and easily look over what's on the shelf to pick something out - lot to be said for tangible content vs cloud streaming content.
I remember seeing SVHS at the electronic big box stores in the 90s but nobody I knew ever owned any SVHS decks. Even the media seemed rare, and I was an active VHS user into the early 00s. Even when TiVo showed up I would copy my favorite shows out to VHS. The TiVo displaced VHS for most time-shifting, (DVD took over for pre-recorded movies,) and was replaced with a cable-provided HDR (which wasn't as usable as the TiVo, but had better quality and could record multiple at a time,) then streaming knocked all of it out.
On a good CRT, VHS was much more "watchable". The analog to digital conversion and interlacing conversion really do a number to the quality on modern screens!
True, also our screens are much bigger today. I remember the Philips Combi 14” in my room and the VHS recordings of TV programs almost looked like the live show.
Good quality captures don't lose much, but there can be major differences between the worst & best video captures of the same material. Even good captures, such as on a DVR, can have a clear pretty difference from the best. We use pal rather than ntsc here, but the captured video shown here seems considerably lower quality than what I'd expect, even the S-VHS capture looks pretty poor. Presumably something like an easycap capture device was used &/or the vcr was in bad shape. For an example of how a VHS capture can look, video below is from a standard VHS tape played in an older VHS vcr. It's a pre-recorded movie in this case, but should be no better than recording your own quality source to vhs: th-cam.com/video/EIyUHkkyYJU/w-d-xo.html There's no sound as I didn't have the original cable for the capture device(with TBC builtin, but TBC likely wasn't needed for this tape), I was using a DIY cable for video only. It's been deinterlaced, upscaled & had some moderate filtering applied, though the filters didn't make much difference for this tape. It also looked good before being upscaled, but youtube ruins lower res uploads. CRTs are indeed generally a better match to watch VHS tapes, but I think the quality of the conversion on modern TVs may vary considerably between TVs. I've got a 10+ year old 46" TV and a VHS tape I played recently looked perfectly fine.
Yeah I had SVHS and still got three of them. Even got a 1989 jvc svhs machine with only 50 hours on the head and works fine. Also got a top end model with low hours that’s got TBC in it and FireWire too. They are still good if viewed right. I also use to repair vcrs and done lots and more than I can remember. I still do electronics but not vhs no more unless one comes to me. I still have all my test kit for vhs lol.
Maybe you can answer me a (probably stupid) question: what you need to change in a NTSC VTR to convert it in a PAL one. Because mechanical parts are the same, I guess. Of course, I don't ask that to use a home VHS from USA in Europe, can be much more stupid that the question, but yes a professional one: you can find there much more and with a better solutions (ex., S-VHS JVC 822).
@@andorcor your better to buy a NTSC to PAL converter on the output. You can get good quality ones or rip the video to a PC and convert it in there. To turn a NTSC vcr into PAL is a lot of work because you would have to change many components. It’s hard to explain because how NTSC is do so different from PAL. Also tape speed is different to between the format. I could explain it better but would take ages to put down in writing. One of my latests models plays both formats, so might be better looking out for a multi format. Sorry I not explained it well, it’s one of those things I can see in my head but can’t seem to explain it easy on a post.
Yes it's hard to make a comparaison in the digital domain but it can be done with some measures, It must be captured in lossless AVI via S-Video and de-interlaced using high quality de-interlacer such as QTGMC and upscaled to 4k before put on the timeline, NLE software tend to do horribly when it comes to upscaling, never crop the picture, just add black bars on the sides, preferably use high end consumer S-VHS machines due to the fact that those broadcast machines are heavily worn due to excessive daily use. If you want to make a comparaison 2.0, I can provide you with ready to use 4K samples using one of my high end machines I have. One thing to note that S-VHS only improved luma, Chroma remained unchanged, about 40 levels horizontally.
I had one of JVC's early flagship consumer S-VHS decks. It cost a great deal but it was incredibly versatile and robust. I used it until television broadcasting here went digital. Initially, the TV I paired it with was probably about 54cm (21") but I soon replaced it with a 66cm (26") JVC TV. The integration was perfect - a single SCART cable. The quality improvement was noticeable. On the 66cm, S-VHS was very nearly as good as broadcast. It's a shame it didn't take off, but not terribly surprised it didn't. JVC still couldn't figure out how to get everyone to upgrade by the time they did W-VHS and D-VHS. I wonder if they tried to do backwards compatibility, laying down a VHS signal plus the S-VHS signal higher up on the tape. It probably would've needed much more expensive tape, though, and much more involved circuitry. interestingly, they did release VHS decks that could read S-VHS tapes, but not make them. Of couraw, that was too little too late.
I had a few SVHS decks in the 90s. My problem was the cost of the tapes, for the price of one 3hr SVHS tape, you could get 3, 4, or even 5 good brand 3hr VHS tapes and the price never came down. They were sold as a premium product at a premium price, displayed behind the cashier like rays of a magnetic halo individually entombed in thick plastic sleeves.
I don't think I've ever heard a better description! "Rays of a magnetic halo, individually entombed in thick plastic sleeves". That's great! So true. They were very pricey at the time.
I still have a box of Fuji pro-grade SVHS tapes in their plastic clamshells. (We would buy them in 10-packs back in the day.) They were pricey, but you got what you paid for.
No consumer analogue video formats including S-VHS record the chroma and luma separately, they are both recorded by the same heads, they are composite "colour under" systems. Two heads are used to record two tracks [fields] of video in one revolution of the head drum, two fields making up one interlaced frame of video on playback. One of the problems with S-VHS was athough the luminance frequencies were shifted up to improve resolution, the colour bandwidth remained the same. This is one reason why S-VHS was never taken up seriously by broadcasters. Consumer Betamax had a slightly better colour bandwidth and generally looked ever so slightly better in colour fidelity. An example of separate chroma and luma recording is the professional Betacam / BetacamSP format. Betacam [not to be confused with Betamax] has four heads in the drum to record colour and luminance on their own separate tracks. In one revolution of the head drum, four tracks would be recorded comprising two fields of video. Two tracks [fields] of luminance and two tracks of chrominance, interlaced together to produce a single frame of video during playback. This is called "component recording." VHS and S-VHS were not component recording systems. The reason S-VHS recordings couldn't be played back on standard VHS recorders was because the higher luminance frequencies were too high for a standard VHS recorder to process. Capturing analogue video shouldn't degrade the quality of capture at all. In fact they should appear indistinguishable if done properly. I do this for a living all the time. Essentially you will need machines that are in tip-top shape and operating to spec, a good time-base corrector is absolutely essential, and appropriate equipment to properly capture the video. If you are trying to capture from an S-VHS machine, use the S-Video output for the best result. I use a Blackmagic Teranex to process the video in real time, and output it to the resolution and frame rate I want, and I then take the output of the Teranex using Serial Digital Interface [a professional industry standard] to a Blackmagic SDI capture card in the computer. Captures are indistinguishable to the source material.
"No consumer analogue video formats including S-VHS record the chroma and luma separately" The reality is the opposite of what you said, i.e., all of the well-known ones record chroma and luma separately (and there is at least one not-so-well-known one, W-VHS, which records separate Y, Pb, and Pr, like Betacam does). "they are composite "colour under" systems." Yes, they are all color under (except for W-VHS, which was an analog HD format that recorded component video [YPbPr]), and your phrase "composite color under" is a contradiction of terms. VHS and others couldn't record an NTSC composite signal directly like e.g., professional VTRs could, such as 2" or 1" Quad, because it didn't have enough bandwidth, so the "color under" system was devised. With color under recording, the color information (chroma) is extracted from the composite signal and recorded to tape at a much lower frequency, thereby drastically reducing the color bandwidth compared to the original NTSC composite signal that it's recording. Since the composite signal it's recording inherently has to be split into separate chroma and luma in order to selectively reduce the frequencies (the chroma frequency gets reduced by a lot more than the luma frequency does, for obvious reasons), it wouldn't make any sense to then recombine them before recording them to tape, which is why that doesn't happen. Chroma and luma are recorded separately to tape in all color under systems. And although recording separate chroma and luma to the tape seems like it would be higher quality, in the case of color under, it isn't, because the original signal it's recording is composite, so recording composite directly to the tape would be the least lossy method, but like I said, it doesn't have enough bandwidth for that. All color under systems can benefit from an S-Video (Y/C) output, because that eliminates additional losses that happen when the VCR recombines the separate chroma and luma on the tape during playback to output a composite signal, and when the TV's comb filter has to split them back into Y/C again. "An example of separate chroma and luma recording is the professional Betacam / BetacamSP format." No, Betacam is an example of separate Y, Pb, Pr recording (3 components, not 2). "In one revolution of the head drum, four tracks would be recorded comprising two fields of video. Two tracks [fields] of luminance and two tracks of chrominance" That's not how it works. You need to look up a diagram of how Betacam records a video signal. For starters, it doesn't record chroma at all. Like I said, for color information it records two color-difference signals (Pb and Pr) rather than a single color/chroma signal. Pb is the difference between blue and luma (also known as B − Y) and Pr is the difference between red and luma (also known as R − Y). Like I said, W-VHS does the same thing, though it has a different approach to accomplishing it.
I have a Casablanca Avio digital recorder with VHS and S-VHS inputs and outputs ..( as well as a firewire input -output ) It's almost brand new and works perfectly . I don't know why I keep it, as it's never used ....
It is basically a mini NLE editing computer with video capture capability, but since it only captures into mpeg-2 or DV, it is basically useless, You want to capture lossless, de-interlace and encode to a modern efficient codec.
@@Capturing-Memories ' basically useless ' ? i edited a decades worth of VHS and some digital footage with it effortlessly ..even recorded sport from directly connected Tv and edited to suit ..in minutes ...no rendering ( except when using effects ) .. You've got that all wrong mate
@@CaptainDarrick Lol, When did you do that? 20 years ago? In Pentium era you can only do lossy mpeg-2 or DV, Lossless was only possible in the professional world using digital tape format such as D1 and digibeta, That gadget is a novelty now, you are only keeping it for nostalgic purposes, now you know why you are keeping it.
@@Capturing-Memories Yes, it was twenty years ago ...so what ? I still can pull it out if need convenience and speed .. I don't care that is not up to date . I have 300 vinyl albums too , most bought before you were born ...perhaps I should just throw them out too ?
Interesting your comment about video quality improving in the future. This did not really happen with audio. CD quality is still better than most MP3. PS I have SVHS ET deck with can use normal VHS tapes and produce better quality.
SVHS to me was a format that was more affordable to have compared to Betacam, my family had SVHS decks and SVHS cameras but also when looking at Betacam SP professional decks and MUSE HD makes you wonder what an alternate universe could've been in terms of quality for the home around the 90s if tech moved just a little faster in a different direction, DVHS is also a format that should've made it earlier and cheaper but DVD was still the mainstream preference until Blu-ray came along.
all that was really missing wasn't adequate tech, of course, but adequate promotion. They needed to have lined up commitment from various Hollywoid studios to commit to providing some high profile content on the format and electronics stores needed to be setup to all ge displaying the regular VHS vs SVHS, as well as the same thing at video rental stores - get the public drooling for the much superior image quality. That would take a lot of marketing investment and clearly there was no ability to pony that up, but if the studios could have been convinced that going to a superior format would be good for them, then there could have been some marketing cost sharing via a consortium. Yet more What If History musings...
I don't believe the current 4k will be greatly improved, as it is reaching the performance of the human eye. And VHS looked better on a CRT TV. great video cheers
I got an S-VHS VCR in the late 90s. I had gotten into Laserdisc a few years prior and after also getting a 30" TV, regular ol' VHS just was looking way worse than what my cable box was providing and even moreso than LD. And I hated how when I was recording PPV events to VHS, even in SP mode, it was way more washed out looking than how it looked when it aired. Also, renting LDs and recording them to VHS was not doing it for me either. Getting an S-VHS VCR changed all that. Recording rented LDs only lost a little bit of color and added a little bit of video noise, but it was very close to the originals. And PPV event recording looked much better. One experiment I hope to try out with the S-VHS VCRs I still have is to see if recording to Chromium Oxide VHS tapes (something from the 80s I only recently discovered was a thing) in S-VHS mode would have the same effect as recording to an actual S-VHS tape. I mean, S-VHS are formulated for higher coercivity, and the same was said for Chromium Oxide audio cassettes. I'll get around to that sooner or later.
When growing up in the '90s, I knew SVHS existed. But never knew anyone who had a SVHS recorder. I've seen Betamax and Video2000 machines, but never SVHS.
Man, NTSC on VHS does look terrible. PAL looks much better in a digitised video. Did you record in anamorphic widescreen, or did you crop to 16:9? And for the cherry on top of the cake, I will release the first film on S-VHS in maybe 40 years in 2024, so keep an eye out.
It's all relative. The average screen size in this late 70s and through the 80s was probably 20 inches and a large screen was probably 27. Now the average screen size is 65 with large screens going up around 100 inches - try putting VHS footage on the modern screen +if you can find a screen with the legacy connections) it doesn't look very good. Small screen CRTs hid the shortcomings of analogue video tape machines.
I really loved this video. I always tell the younger generation that they don't know how good they have it - but tell people of my generation that 4K will be considered "crap" in the future and they laugh at me. You're the first person I've seen touch on this point. Great video!
I actually still use VHS, not just to watch old recordings and movies, but to record from time to time as well. Is it a perfect format? No. But I look at it this way. VHS is a reliable, consumer friendly, time-tested, and practical format that has existed for over 47 years (since 1976). It may be a standard definition, non-hd format, but even some digital television stations in my area broadcast at 480i. If it’s good enough for television stations, why wouldn’t it be good enough for the average daily user like myself. The sound quality VHS offers is also very good (provided it is in Hi-Fi stereo). Considering all of this, why stop using VHS just because it’s an old format when it still has it’s uses? I believe in using both new, state of the art technology, as well as sticking to some technologies that may be old, but are still useful.
Thanks for a great video! As an 80s tech fanatic, I just recently started collecting SVHS gear. I now got a Mitsubishi top of the line SVHS player, 2x Panasonic DP-200 SVHS videocameras and a couple of SVHS tapes. I havent payed around with this all much yet, as I just dont have the space where I live now. Will subscribe to your channel because this was a very good lesson!
What is a pity is that there is a quality gap between present day digital video and the old day's super 8 film format. I have digitized super 8 from my visit to the US in 1975 that is better quality then my Video8 tapes from my visit to the US in 1989. And in 2016 I was again in the US, now with a Panasonic digital camera. Times are a changing!
hi i never spy the format till had to find about format i did have vhs hi-fi because my bro and mates had it i used it for a long time till i got betacam deks note alot of my recording went on the computer and i used betacamfor the old video look
I think that Yours SVHS sample was like VHS. SVHS is closer to DVDs. I only few times in my life saw so low quality VHS like Yours and i doubt that it was any professional recordings.
th-cam.com/video/3FWHmk-9hvU/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2JzNebwQQU05oqrH Supposedly, this is a vhs recording. If it's not a mistake by the creator of the video and it really is vhs and not s-vhs, it looks great.
Many later model VHS units had “Qasi S-VHS” playback which would playback S-VHS tapes, albeit with standard VHS quality. You’re bound to find a few with the ability in local thrift stores at very reasonable prices.
There really wasn't a whole lot that could be done to increase picture quality but keep them all compatible. That's why SVHS was its own format. The introduction of VHS HQ in the early 1980s improved quality a little, but the narrower heads needed to record at the extended play speeds (EP/SLP) ended up negating any improvement in that system.
Is a shame vcr’s stopped including headphone jacks, and input audio meters. These basic features are included even on the cheapest Cassatt decks. Why did vcr’s strip these basic features? I cannot believe it would cost very much to include them. They wrecked VCR’s doing this.
I agree. If you look at the average VCR user in the 80s and 90s who couldn't even set the clock, it's not surprising they would eliminate features most wouldn't use. Especially when they starting building them to hit a budget.
Greetings, Marcel! I visited the Netherlands a couple times when I was a child. Still remember it fondly. In fact, I believe some of the footage I used in my Super8 film conversion video was from my first time there.
Some minor details:
1) Lines of resolution in analog video is not the same thing as scan lines. For example NTSC always has 525 scan lines or 262.5 X 2 if you take in the interlacing into account. What lines of resolution really means is the number of lines or dots that can be resolved within a scan line, and above 40% of the video range (0.7 volts). It's analogous to pixels. The term comes from film photography where they measure camera resolution the same way. So a "resolution of 240 lines" means that there is enough high frequency bandwidth to resolve 240 dots within a scan line. But there sill is 525 (or 262.5 x 2) actual scan lines. True broadcast standard definition video is 640 pixels or over "600 lines", So based on that, VHS was rather poor. The accepted formula is 80 lines per megahertz of video bandwidth in the analog world.
2) All analog consumer VCRs and 3/4in Umatic recorded the color separately. This was mandatory due to the lower video bandwidth on lower cost formats. In VHS, the 3.58 mhz chroma side bands are down converted to 767khz. and mixed back to the FM luminance signal that is recorded on. the tape. It is a AM signal using the luminance FM as a bias signal. Since it is an AM recording, noise is a problem. And the reduction of the chroma frequency also reduces the bandwidth of the encoded R-Y, B-Y video signals.
The chroma system in SVHS is functionally identical to any old VHS VCR. What they did on SVHS was to raise the FM carrier frequency so that more luminance video bandwidth could be recorded. But that also demanded new tape formulations to make it work correctly. As we only sense detail in the luminance or B&W portion of the signal, it does look sharper. But SVHS did nothing to improve the chroma bandwidth or the noise that resulted form the AM recording process which gave VHS the "cartoon" look for color.
The Svideo jack is another discussion which has nothing to do with SVHS. In fact Svideo connectors could have been added to any standard VHS machine. What Svideo does is to keep the chroma and luminance separated, in theory from the mastering process all the way to the consumer display. The bulk of the NTSC artifacts such as dot crawl and the rainbow on Jonny Carson's Houndstooth sport jacket occur when the luminance and chroma signals are combined for composite video. So if you can avoid combining them and then breaking them apart multiple times, you have less NTSC artifacts. Then why didn't plain VHS VCRs, which also record the chroma separately, ever have Svideo connectors? I believe because the quality on standard VHS was so poor, any benefit from Svideo connections would have been negligible. Additionally why add a feature to standard VHS that could potentially undermine the market for SVHS VCRs. Also keep in mind that Svideo is NOT component video where RGB or Y, RY,BY are three separate video signals. Only some broadcast formats such as Sony Betacam (not Betamax) or Panasonic M2 recorded true component video. Of course digital VTRs changed all of that. Svideo is kind of in between composite and component video and in reality did little to improve the image over composite as broadcast and most movie mastering was still composite until the mid 1990s when we went digital.
You can play an SVHS tape on a standard VHS VCR. But you will observe dropouts and noise on bright white portions of the image. This is because standard VHS cannot handle the higher FM frequencies used in SVHS. The brighter the video signal, the higher the FM frequency. A dark dim TV show or movie on SVHS may play fine on a standard VHS VCR, But watch what happens with white credits on a dark background.
Excellent explanation! Just want to add that some VHS machines had SQPB (S-VHS quasi playback) that could play, as the name implies, SVHS tapes without these problems. But the output is still VHS quality.
Most later standard VHS VCRs do support Super VHS playback. It will only be at standard VHS quality, but otherwise the image will look fine. This was called "Quasi S-VHS" or "SQPB" (S-VHS Quasi PlayBack). And if you did have a Super VHS VCR, S-VHS ET allowed you to make nearly-full-quality S-VHS recordings on inexpensive regular VHS tapes, although it was more prone to noise and dropouts.
Came here to say something like that, but wasn't going to do ANYWHERE near as good a job, so, upvote is all I can do... :)
Lines of resolution is measured on a square area so the actual number was third bigger. I have heard that the broadcast TV was about 330 lines.
@@okaro6595 As I explained above, lines of resolution does not mean counting scan lines. In NTSC those are fixed at 525 lines and 625 in PAL. The resolution measurement is the number of resolvable line pairs per line. Resolvable means at least 40ire on a standard 1 volt video signal. Another way to measure that is with multiburst or a sweep signal. The formula is 80 lines per mhz of bandwidth.
I'm sorry but you misunderstood what "240 lines of resolution" means.
As you mention, each video frame is 525 lines (625 lines in PAL). This is true for the air waves as well as for the picture that gets recorded on a VCR (there were some obscure early video recording systems that only recorded one field but I'll ignore those).
The 240 lines that you're talking about are not vertical (video) lines but the number of vertical lines that could be recorded in a single video line, i.e. the number of times that the video signal could go from black to white on a single line of video without losing too much quality. On a high quality broadcast NTSC signal, the resolution is about 640 lines (on PAL it's about 720) if I remember correctly.
Both VHS and S-VHS record luminance and chrominance signals separately, but on S-VHS there is more separation than on VHS. They are basically frequency-modulated, and the modulated signal is recorded by the spinning heads, at the same time. In both VHS and S-VHS, the luminance signal is modulated at the same base frequency so if you play an S-VHS tape on a VHS machine, you'll see a black and white picture. But the luminance and chrominance signals are modulated further apart on S-VHS than on VHS. That way there is more room in the modulated signal to record more resolution. It also requires better tape (with smaller magnetic particles). You can drill a hole in the right place in a high quality VHS cassette and make S-VHS mode recordings with an S-VHS recorder. You'll get a higher quality recording than VHS but not as good as S-VHS on S-VHS tape. Of course, quality is highly dependent on the quality of the tape because it's still an analog format.
I still have my PAL S-VHS recorder from Europe, and it has a Teletext decoder attached to it for VPS/VPT (Video Programming System / Video Programming via Teletext). It made it possible to program the VCR by going to the Teletext page that showed program information for the station you were tuned into and programming the VCR to record a scheduled show with a single button. And it would automatically record the show even if it was rescheduled or started early or late. It also allows watching Teletext from recorded tapes, but that really only works with tapes that are recorded in S-VHS mode, because the teletext signal needed a resolution of 320 (or was it 360?) lines: Each Teletext line of text was transmitted as a video line with 40 bytes of digital information: seven or eight bits per character plus a parity bit.
There was also a VHS-Pro format that had an even higher quality / resolution than S-VHS. My college had a Panasonic VHS-Pro editing studio ca. 1992 but it wasn't used much and I've never seen the format anywhere else.
I think you might be slightly mistaken as well. It is true that a VHS machine does output 525 lines, which is the NTSC standard, but VHS tape itself can only resolve approximately 43% of that detail. This is where the standard ~240 lines of horizontal resolution is obtained in most literature on VHS.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel The comment by @andydelle4509 explains it more clearly than I did but he's basically saying what I wanted to say.
@@VintageElectronicsChannelAn analogue format can't actively drop scan lines, it would take complicated digital circuitry to achieve that which those machines didn't have. Therefore VHS has full 525(NTSC)/625(PAL SECAM) scan lines, it can't help doing so.
"Lines of resolution" does not refer to these scan lines. It means left-right resolution. The wording is ambiguous which leads to misunderstanding, measuring horizontal resolution in MHz would be less confusing. Broadcast quality is about 5 MHz, VHS can only deliver 2.4 MHz, ish.
Actual picture content is only 480 scan lines(!) in NTSC, 575 in PAL/SECAM not due to overscan, but because the vertical blanking signal uses up 45 (NTSC)/50(PAL SECAM) lines. There's no image information there, which is why in digital applications like DVD and standard definition digital broadcast, only 480/576 lines are transmitted. DVD players and digital settop boxes with analogue out recreate a standard NTSC/PAL signal by adding 45/50 black lines to each frame.
The color RECORDING is identical for VHS and S-VHS ! 627KHz AM Colorunder. However, the separate Y/C cables enable a higher Y resolution than is possible via a Y/C separation filter based on a CVBS source (broadcast tuner, laser disc, VHS recorder). Many other “experts” on YT have already explained this incorrectly. TV engineer from Hamburg.
this is a common misunderstanding, yes.
fun fact : it might be good to remember (not to you, of course :D) than early philips VCR (N150x) had a separated Y/C din socket on their back :)
@@whaka54000 The VCR Recorders from PHILIPS only have a CVBS Output from the Factory. DIN or BNC. However, I suggested a Circuit Diagram to pick up Y and C separately from PHILIPS VCR Recorders. th-cam.com/video/4BMRAhz2ruk/w-d-xo.html
It's not right to say SVHS recorded luma and chroma separately. BetacamSP does that. SVHS is a colour under format, the chroma performance is ghastly just like VHS, making it utterly useless for broadcast use. SVHSC pretty much bombed, it couldn't compete with Hi8 which was smaller, has much longer running time and was supported by more manufacturers. SVHS would have done better if the chroma performance had been improved, not just luma.
Wich is sad but makes sense because Panasonic has always making very high quality and good Super VHS and Super VHS-C camcorders even until the early 2000s. I bought a Super VHS-C camcorder probably from very early 2000s or maybe 1999 (Is a NV-VS4) that had TBC, Super image stabilization, the "ET" function and some other cool things except it have mono audio but even stereo microphones built in consumer camcorders where barely the same as mono microphones. The real difference in audio was with more professional shotgun microphones.
Don't get me wrong still the VHS-C format was not good but Panasonic did very very good camcorders in the Super VHS and Super VHS-C line! Especially those that had the amorphous pro heads in a lot of Panasonic cameras.
I grew up with PAL VHS and DVD. One thing I noticed when playing NTSC tapes, was that the blacks are lighter compared to PAL tapes where black is black. The NTSC VHS tapes had very muted colours and also have this effect where the redish colours leave motion smearing. The PAL tapes don't handle reds that well either with colour bleed everywhere, but they don' t have the motion smearing
I was sort of late to the game as I got my first second hand VHS recorder in 1991. But I was also late to give it up as I used VHS up until 2021 - though not very often and it was a newer machine than the one I bought in 1991. To me SVHS was something I pretty much never noticed. In my circle of people the discussion was more if VHS-LP had a tolerable quality. There was one guy I knew who recorded everything in LP to save tape and it was a bummer when you wanted to borrow a movie from him and your own machine only had SP like mine.
I put up with the inferior quality of VHS - PAL over here - until something better than SVHS came along. I embraced DVCAM. I saw little point shelling out for a new SVHS system only to have to replace it shortly afterwards. It was also a breeze to import DV footage into premiere for clean editing which did not degrade on copying back. But I certainly don't miss those pumping reds from VHS.
Two fields don't necessarily make up a frame of video when we're talking about stuff that's shot on video. Every field is a moment in time of its own, so 60hz video means 60 fields and each field is that moment in time, if you combine them you get combing artifacts. The reason people talk about it as a frame is that's how digital interlaced video works, analog video you don't have frames, you just have odd and even fields.
Still running my Mitsubishi HS-M1000 S-VHS VCR. BTW, many VHS machines which came out after S-VHS had “Qasi S-VHS” playback which allowed playback of S-VHS tapes albeit in standard VHS quality.
I tried the first couple of JVC S-VHS machines released at the time and found them to be unimpressive with very poor frame manipulation, I sent them back. I left it a couple of years and then purchased Panasonic (starting with FS100) and never looked back.
As with most machines, the tape you put in the machine had a major effect on the picture quality and the best tape I found that worked with the Panasonic's were TDK XP-PRO. There always seemed to be more dot -crawl and less colour with JVC tapes.
Am still using a VHS player in my audio video setup because there's a catalog of films we have on that format that we don't have on any digital format, and the grandkids are perfectly content. And they enjoying putting the cartridges in, rewinding them, and taking them out - the cartridges are large and easy for them to handle. It's like it's kind of a goid format for choldren's content. Can go and easily look over what's on the shelf to pick something out - lot to be said for tangible content vs cloud streaming content.
I remember seeing SVHS at the electronic big box stores in the 90s but nobody I knew ever owned any SVHS decks. Even the media seemed rare, and I was an active VHS user into the early 00s. Even when TiVo showed up I would copy my favorite shows out to VHS.
The TiVo displaced VHS for most time-shifting, (DVD took over for pre-recorded movies,) and was replaced with a cable-provided HDR (which wasn't as usable as the TiVo, but had better quality and could record multiple at a time,) then streaming knocked all of it out.
On a good CRT, VHS was much more "watchable". The analog to digital conversion and interlacing conversion really do a number to the quality on modern screens!
Agree. It makes VHS look much worse than it really is.
Therres also dvhs to but my machine stopped working. @@VintageElectronicsChannel
True, also our screens are much bigger today. I remember the Philips Combi 14” in my room and the VHS recordings of TV programs almost looked like the live show.
Good quality captures don't lose much, but there can be major differences between the worst & best video captures of the same material. Even good captures, such as on a DVR, can have a clear pretty difference from the best. We use pal rather than ntsc here, but the captured video shown here seems considerably lower quality than what I'd expect, even the S-VHS capture looks pretty poor. Presumably something like an easycap capture device was used &/or the vcr was in bad shape.
For an example of how a VHS capture can look, video below is from a standard VHS tape played in an older VHS vcr. It's a pre-recorded movie in this case, but should be no better than recording your own quality source to vhs:
th-cam.com/video/EIyUHkkyYJU/w-d-xo.html
There's no sound as I didn't have the original cable for the capture device(with TBC builtin, but TBC likely wasn't needed for this tape), I was using a DIY cable for video only. It's been deinterlaced, upscaled & had some moderate filtering applied, though the filters didn't make much difference for this tape. It also looked good before being upscaled, but youtube ruins lower res uploads.
CRTs are indeed generally a better match to watch VHS tapes, but I think the quality of the conversion on modern TVs may vary considerably between TVs. I've got a 10+ year old 46" TV and a VHS tape I played recently looked perfectly fine.
Yeah I had SVHS and still got three of them. Even got a 1989 jvc svhs machine with only 50 hours on the head and works fine. Also got a top end model with low hours that’s got TBC in it and FireWire too. They are still good if viewed right. I also use to repair vcrs and done lots and more than I can remember. I still do electronics but not vhs no more unless one comes to me. I still have all my test kit for vhs lol.
Maybe you can answer me a (probably stupid) question: what you need to change in a NTSC VTR to convert it in a PAL one. Because mechanical parts are the same, I guess.
Of course, I don't ask that to use a home VHS from USA in Europe, can be much more stupid that the question, but yes a professional one: you can find there much more and with a better solutions (ex., S-VHS JVC 822).
@@andorcor your better to buy a NTSC to PAL converter on the output. You can get good quality ones or rip the video to a PC and convert it in there. To turn a NTSC vcr into PAL is a lot of work because you would have to change many components. It’s hard to explain because how NTSC is do so different from PAL. Also tape speed is different to between the format. I could explain it better but would take ages to put down in writing. One of my latests models plays both formats, so might be better looking out for a multi format. Sorry I not explained it well, it’s one of those things I can see in my head but can’t seem to explain it easy on a post.
Yes it's hard to make a comparaison in the digital domain but it can be done with some measures, It must be captured in lossless AVI via S-Video and de-interlaced using high quality de-interlacer such as QTGMC and upscaled to 4k before put on the timeline, NLE software tend to do horribly when it comes to upscaling, never crop the picture, just add black bars on the sides, preferably use high end consumer S-VHS machines due to the fact that those broadcast machines are heavily worn due to excessive daily use. If you want to make a comparaison 2.0, I can provide you with ready to use 4K samples using one of my high end machines I have. One thing to note that S-VHS only improved luma, Chroma remained unchanged, about 40 levels horizontally.
i still use my 80s made JVC vhs recorder
I had one of JVC's early flagship consumer S-VHS decks. It cost a great deal but it was incredibly versatile and robust. I used it until television broadcasting here went digital. Initially, the TV I paired it with was probably about 54cm (21") but I soon replaced it with a 66cm (26") JVC TV. The integration was perfect - a single SCART cable.
The quality improvement was noticeable. On the 66cm, S-VHS was very nearly as good as broadcast. It's a shame it didn't take off, but not terribly surprised it didn't. JVC still couldn't figure out how to get everyone to upgrade by the time they did W-VHS and D-VHS. I wonder if they tried to do backwards compatibility, laying down a VHS signal plus the S-VHS signal higher up on the tape. It probably would've needed much more expensive tape, though, and much more involved circuitry.
interestingly, they did release VHS decks that could read S-VHS tapes, but not make them. Of couraw, that was too little too late.
I had a few SVHS decks in the 90s. My problem was the cost of the tapes, for the price of one 3hr SVHS tape, you could get 3, 4, or even 5 good brand 3hr VHS tapes and the price never came down. They were sold as a premium product at a premium price, displayed behind the cashier like rays of a magnetic halo individually entombed in thick plastic sleeves.
I don't think I've ever heard a better description! "Rays of a magnetic halo, individually entombed in thick plastic sleeves". That's great! So true. They were very pricey at the time.
I still have a box of Fuji pro-grade SVHS tapes in their plastic clamshells. (We would buy them in 10-packs back in the day.) They were pricey, but you got what you paid for.
I had a SVHS recorder. The quality difference was staggering at the time.
No consumer analogue video formats including S-VHS record the chroma and luma separately, they are both recorded by the same heads, they are composite "colour under" systems. Two heads are used to record two tracks [fields] of video in one revolution of the head drum, two fields making up one interlaced frame of video on playback. One of the problems with S-VHS was athough the luminance frequencies were shifted up to improve resolution, the colour bandwidth remained the same. This is one reason why S-VHS was never taken up seriously by broadcasters. Consumer Betamax had a slightly better colour bandwidth and generally looked ever so slightly better in colour fidelity.
An example of separate chroma and luma recording is the professional Betacam / BetacamSP format. Betacam [not to be confused with Betamax] has four heads in the drum to record colour and luminance on their own separate tracks. In one revolution of the head drum, four tracks would be recorded comprising two fields of video. Two tracks [fields] of luminance and two tracks of chrominance, interlaced together to produce a single frame of video during playback. This is called "component recording." VHS and S-VHS were not component recording systems. The reason S-VHS recordings couldn't be played back on standard VHS recorders was because the higher luminance frequencies were too high for a standard VHS recorder to process.
Capturing analogue video shouldn't degrade the quality of capture at all. In fact they should appear indistinguishable if done properly. I do this for a living all the time. Essentially you will need machines that are in tip-top shape and operating to spec, a good time-base corrector is absolutely essential, and appropriate equipment to properly capture the video. If you are trying to capture from an S-VHS machine, use the S-Video output for the best result. I use a Blackmagic Teranex to process the video in real time, and output it to the resolution and frame rate I want, and I then take the output of the Teranex using Serial Digital Interface [a professional industry standard] to a Blackmagic SDI capture card in the computer. Captures are indistinguishable to the source material.
"No consumer analogue video formats including S-VHS record the chroma and luma separately"
The reality is the opposite of what you said, i.e., all of the well-known ones record chroma and luma separately (and there is at least one not-so-well-known one, W-VHS, which records separate Y, Pb, and Pr, like Betacam does).
"they are composite "colour under" systems."
Yes, they are all color under (except for W-VHS, which was an analog HD format that recorded component video [YPbPr]), and your phrase "composite color under" is a contradiction of terms. VHS and others couldn't record an NTSC composite signal directly like e.g., professional VTRs could, such as 2" or 1" Quad, because it didn't have enough bandwidth, so the "color under" system was devised. With color under recording, the color information (chroma) is extracted from the composite signal and recorded to tape at a much lower frequency, thereby drastically reducing the color bandwidth compared to the original NTSC composite signal that it's recording.
Since the composite signal it's recording inherently has to be split into separate chroma and luma in order to selectively reduce the frequencies (the chroma frequency gets reduced by a lot more than the luma frequency does, for obvious reasons), it wouldn't make any sense to then recombine them before recording them to tape, which is why that doesn't happen. Chroma and luma are recorded separately to tape in all color under systems. And although recording separate chroma and luma to the tape seems like it would be higher quality, in the case of color under, it isn't, because the original signal it's recording is composite, so recording composite directly to the tape would be the least lossy method, but like I said, it doesn't have enough bandwidth for that.
All color under systems can benefit from an S-Video (Y/C) output, because that eliminates additional losses that happen when the VCR recombines the separate chroma and luma on the tape during playback to output a composite signal, and when the TV's comb filter has to split them back into Y/C again.
"An example of separate chroma and luma recording is the professional Betacam / BetacamSP format."
No, Betacam is an example of separate Y, Pb, Pr recording (3 components, not 2).
"In one revolution of the head drum, four tracks would be recorded comprising two fields of video. Two tracks [fields] of luminance and two tracks of chrominance"
That's not how it works. You need to look up a diagram of how Betacam records a video signal. For starters, it doesn't record chroma at all. Like I said, for color information it records two color-difference signals (Pb and Pr) rather than a single color/chroma signal. Pb is the difference between blue and luma (also known as B − Y) and Pr is the difference between red and luma (also known as R − Y). Like I said, W-VHS does the same thing, though it has a different approach to accomplishing it.
I have a Casablanca Avio digital recorder with VHS and S-VHS inputs and outputs ..( as well as a firewire input -output ) It's almost brand new and works perfectly . I don't know why I keep it, as it's never used ....
It is basically a mini NLE editing computer with video capture capability, but since it only captures into mpeg-2 or DV, it is basically useless, You want to capture lossless, de-interlace and encode to a modern efficient codec.
@@Capturing-Memories ' basically useless ' ? i edited a decades worth of VHS and some digital footage with it effortlessly ..even recorded sport from directly connected Tv and edited to suit ..in minutes ...no rendering ( except when using effects ) .. You've got that all wrong mate
@@CaptainDarrick Lol, When did you do that? 20 years ago? In Pentium era you can only do lossy mpeg-2 or DV, Lossless was only possible in the professional world using digital tape format such as D1 and digibeta, That gadget is a novelty now, you are only keeping it for nostalgic purposes, now you know why you are keeping it.
@@Capturing-Memories Yes, it was twenty years ago ...so what ? I still can pull it out if need convenience and speed .. I don't care that is not up to date . I have 300 vinyl albums too , most bought before you were born ...perhaps I should just throw them out too ?
@@CaptainDarrick Facts don't care about feelings, move on.
Interesting your comment about video quality improving in the future. This did not really happen with audio. CD quality is still better than most MP3. PS I have SVHS ET deck with can use normal VHS tapes and produce better quality.
SVHS to me was a format that was more affordable to have compared to Betacam, my family had SVHS decks and SVHS cameras but also when looking at Betacam SP professional decks and MUSE HD makes you wonder what an alternate universe could've been in terms of quality for the home around the 90s if tech moved just a little faster in a different direction, DVHS is also a format that should've made it earlier and cheaper but DVD was still the mainstream preference until Blu-ray came along.
all that was really missing wasn't adequate tech, of course, but adequate promotion. They needed to have lined up commitment from various Hollywoid studios to commit to providing some high profile content on the format and electronics stores needed to be setup to all ge displaying the regular VHS vs SVHS, as well as the same thing at video rental stores - get the public drooling for the much superior image quality. That would take a lot of marketing investment and clearly there was no ability to pony that up, but if the studios could have been convinced that going to a superior format would be good for them, then there could have been some marketing cost sharing via a consortium. Yet more What If History musings...
I don't believe the current 4k will be greatly improved, as it is reaching the performance of the human eye. And VHS looked better on a CRT TV. great video cheers
I got an S-VHS VCR in the late 90s. I had gotten into Laserdisc a few years prior and after also getting a 30" TV, regular ol' VHS just was looking way worse than what my cable box was providing and even moreso than LD. And I hated how when I was recording PPV events to VHS, even in SP mode, it was way more washed out looking than how it looked when it aired.
Also, renting LDs and recording them to VHS was not doing it for me either.
Getting an S-VHS VCR changed all that. Recording rented LDs only lost a little bit of color and added a little bit of video noise, but it was very close to the originals. And PPV event recording looked much better.
One experiment I hope to try out with the S-VHS VCRs I still have is to see if recording to Chromium Oxide VHS tapes (something from the 80s I only recently discovered was a thing) in S-VHS mode would have the same effect as recording to an actual S-VHS tape. I mean, S-VHS are formulated for higher coercivity, and the same was said for Chromium Oxide audio cassettes.
I'll get around to that sooner or later.
Hmm... I don't remember VHS tapes labeled as chromium dioxide... sounds like I'll be going down a rabbit hole trying to find some now. Interesting!
Hi there. The video's description says 'ol but it should be ol' as the apostrophe replaces a missing letter. Hope this helps 😊
I knew that. Not sure why I put it on the wrong end. I'm usually the grammar police. Lol
@@VintageElectronicsChannel I'm glad it's not just me 😆
I'm the guy who uses correct punctuation, capitalization, and grammar in text messages. Lol. You're not the only one!
@@VintageElectronicsChannel I used to even do that during the SMS days! Meant I had to shorten what I could say, given the character limit 😆
SVHS was always great to me. I always had at least two. The only thing that beat it was my laserdisc player. 😊
When growing up in the '90s, I knew SVHS existed. But never knew anyone who had a SVHS recorder. I've seen Betamax and Video2000 machines, but never SVHS.
Man, NTSC on VHS does look terrible. PAL looks much better in a digitised video.
Did you record in anamorphic widescreen, or did you crop to 16:9?
And for the cherry on top of the cake, I will release the first film on S-VHS in maybe 40 years in 2024, so keep an eye out.
Let me know when you release that. I'd be interested in seeing that! It was cropped to fit, so there's some loss due to that as well.
7:37 Yes I could, if I can watch something in 340p then VHS would work too! but SVHS preferred
I never thought VHS quality was an issue
It's all relative. The average screen size in this late 70s and through the 80s was probably 20 inches and a large screen was probably 27.
Now the average screen size is 65 with large screens going up around 100 inches - try putting VHS footage on the modern screen +if you can find a screen with the legacy connections) it doesn't look very good.
Small screen CRTs hid the shortcomings of analogue video tape machines.
I really loved this video. I always tell the younger generation that they don't know how good they have it - but tell people of my generation that 4K will be considered "crap" in the future and they laugh at me. You're the first person I've seen touch on this point.
Great video!
Thanks for watching! Folks think 4k (or 8k) is the best it will ever be. Yeah, we thought the same thing back in the day. Lol
I actually still use VHS, not just to watch old recordings and movies, but to record from time to time as well. Is it a perfect format? No. But I look at it this way. VHS is a reliable, consumer friendly, time-tested, and practical format that has existed for over 47 years (since 1976). It may be a standard definition, non-hd format, but even some digital television stations in my area broadcast at 480i. If it’s good enough for television stations, why wouldn’t it be good enough for the average daily user like myself. The sound quality VHS offers is also very good (provided it is in Hi-Fi stereo). Considering all of this, why stop using VHS just because it’s an old format when it still has it’s uses? I believe in using both new, state of the art technology, as well as sticking to some technologies that may be old, but are still useful.
I'm with you 100% on that. If it works and you enjoy using it, there's no reason to stop.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel It’s good to see that other people agree!
Thanks for a great video! As an 80s tech fanatic, I just recently started collecting SVHS gear. I now got a Mitsubishi top of the line SVHS player, 2x Panasonic DP-200 SVHS videocameras and a couple of SVHS tapes. I havent payed around with this all much yet, as I just dont have the space where I live now. Will subscribe to your channel because this was a very good lesson!
Thanks for watching! I appreciate the compliment.
What is a pity is that there is a quality gap between present day digital video and the old day's super 8 film format. I have digitized super 8 from my visit to the US in 1975 that is better quality then my Video8 tapes from my visit to the US in 1989. And in 2016 I was again in the US, now with a Panasonic digital camera. Times are a changing!
I've digitized a lot of the super8 video from when I was young, and most of it looks great.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel That's fine, but my point is that the (digitized) super8 analogue film has better quality then Video8 .
Totally agree with you there. Video8 never really impressed me much. Even Hi8 seemed soft.
hi i never spy the format till had to find about format i did have vhs hi-fi because my bro and mates had it
i used it for a long time till i got betacam deks note alot of my recording went on the computer and i used
betacamfor the old video look
Also, IIRC, a frame of chroma was only sampled every-other frame. So you could see a scene change with the new luminance and previous frame's chroma.
I think that Yours SVHS sample was like VHS. SVHS is closer to DVDs. I only few times in my life saw so low quality VHS like Yours and i doubt that it was any professional recordings.
It's my capture device. I've since upgraded.
th-cam.com/video/3FWHmk-9hvU/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2JzNebwQQU05oqrH Supposedly, this is a vhs recording. If it's not a mistake by the creator of the video and it really is vhs and not s-vhs, it looks great.
I have S-VHS tapes I will never get to see.
That's a shame. The curiosity would kill me. I'd have to see what's on them.
Many later model VHS units had “Qasi S-VHS” playback which would playback S-VHS tapes, albeit with standard VHS quality. You’re bound to find a few with the ability in local thrift stores at very reasonable prices.
what im suprised about standard vhs is that picture quality from old 80s player looks identical to a late 90s player
There really wasn't a whole lot that could be done to increase picture quality but keep them all compatible. That's why SVHS was its own format. The introduction of VHS HQ in the early 1980s improved quality a little, but the narrower heads needed to record at the extended play speeds (EP/SLP) ended up negating any improvement in that system.
“9”
Is a shame vcr’s stopped including headphone jacks, and input audio meters. These basic features are included even on the cheapest Cassatt decks. Why did vcr’s strip these basic features? I cannot believe it would cost very much to include them. They wrecked VCR’s doing this.
I agree. If you look at the average VCR user in the 80s and 90s who couldn't even set the clock, it's not surprising they would eliminate features most wouldn't use. Especially when they starting building them to hit a budget.
Thanks for the video! Greets from Marcel The Netherlands in Europe 👍🙂
Greetings, Marcel! I visited the Netherlands a couple times when I was a child. Still remember it fondly. In fact, I believe some of the footage I used in my Super8 film conversion video was from my first time there.